


Inside a WoL's World

by Avidreader893



Category: Final Fantasy XIV
Genre: Angst, Drabbles, Emotional Hurt, Fluff, Gen, Hyur (Final Fantasy XIV), Midlander Hyur (Final Fantasy XIV), Named Warrior of Light (Final Fantasy XIV), Self Confidence Issues, Self-Discovery
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-06-27
Updated: 2020-09-10
Packaged: 2021-03-04 06:14:38
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 12
Words: 2,113
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24938893
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Avidreader893/pseuds/Avidreader893
Summary: A series of unrelated drabbles and one-shots based on the life of my WoLD, Jessamine Calidon. I don't own Final Fantasy XIV. I just write for my characters within SE's wonderful universe.
Kudos: 4





	1. Radiant

**Author's Note:**

> I rated this Explicit just in case I am inspired to write something that is explicitly violent or sexual in nature (I rarely do).

The Light was so bright, she could hardly see for a few moments. She didn’t know what she had expected when she was finally pulled through to the other side of that vast darkness, floating with a thousand voices, a thousand fractured memories. She looked around her, seeing only Light and a vague lavender glow. Were those trees? They looked to be.

With a final shake of her head, the Warrior walked forward, her leather boots quiet on the forest floor. Her vision cleared some and she could just make out a thin line of smoke wafting up through the trees. The radiant Light surrounding everything confounded her and perhaps the person who had made the campfire could enlighten her out of her confusion.


	2. Bisect

I am walking two roads. One preordained by the Mother; I am a hero, the Warrior of Light; Saviour of Eorzea. The other is a secret life, where I mourn those I have lost, where I roil about in anger and loneliness. Oh, the pain of that loneliness. The way everyone I meet, everyone I grow close to, puts me upon a pedestal and reveres me. I am a  _ hero. Surely a hero doesn’t wish for an ordinary life. Surely she has the world at her beck and call. She’s so lucky. _

I sometimes see the road ahead of me bisect. There is another path I could choose. It taunts me with the promise. There might be a way to have that ordinary life. To finally put my fists down and rest; but when I reach the point where the roads should split, there is only the path I have been walking since She first called out to me. I sigh and continue on, doing my best to ignore the exhaustion that is never satiated with sleep.


	3. Crunch

The crunch of snow under my feet was almost deafening. The silence swirled around me, weighed down upon me as I trudged aimlessly through the heavy snowfall. The cold, the concerned calls from the soldiers of the Falcon’s Nest were blotted out of consciousness by the numbness that spread from my heart to the rest of my body.

How could he be gone? How could I accept his death when he still called cheerfully to me, a cup of hot cocoa in each hand? Even as I asked myself these questions, another pang of immense grief seized my heart and all of a sudden, the world came rushing through the fog of grief that had kept it out.

I fell to my knees, tears blinding my vision. A keening wail echoed around me and I wasn’t sure where it had come from. As another scream ripped out, I was shocked to discover it had come from  _ me _ . From my exhausted lungs; from my parched throat. The world once again tilted and all went dark. My last conscious thought was in anger.

_ Why not I instead _


	4. Parched

Can a soul be parched? Can it thirst for its other pieces as a man aches for water?

He called them broken. Broken off soul shards of what once were his people. And there had been an unspoken knowing when he had looked at her. He had placed hope in me. And I had failed so utterly that death was the only answer waiting for us in that final battle.

My soul aches. It burns with anger and sorrow and so much confusion. I am just as much a tool to my God as he had been to his. He had said so himself. And yet he -hoped- that there could have been another way.

What did that mean? What had been that other way. For as much death (millions of lost souls), for as much sin that the Ascians have committed in the name of their mission; their loss still stirs compassion and something far deeper than I am want to examine.

My friends, the First, everyone celebrates still. I put on a smile and pretend. And thirst. And wither.


	5. Unctuous

The beastmen had their Primals. Gods in whom they could summon when they felt the outside world had once again made life horrible for them.

Before the end of the Dragonsong war, Ishgard had their Archbishops and a church mythos built on man’s greed. In the end, he and his loyal were no better than the beastmen, summoning King Thordan.

Even the ‘heretics’, as the Church once called them, believed so strongly in their cause that they made Shiva, a woman who had once loved a dragon, a figure to be worshipped into existence.

We thought we were above the ways of beastmen. We pitied those that called upon heroes and legends of the past to save the faithful and defend their cause. Hydaelyn preserve their souls.

I had never thought myself so unbelievably unctuous, so eager to please those who followed the Mother. My faith had been as strong and I was willing to do Hydaelyn’s bidding without complaint.

Until I was called to the First. Until I met  _ him.  _ The Ascian, whose goal was to undo the Sundering. Sacrificing countless lives to bring back a civilization that lived only in his memory. My soul snarled and lashed out. I was bitterly opposed to these Ascians. Opposed to Zodiark’s followers.

And then Y’shtola died, sacrificing herself for our mission. For Hydaelyn.

And he brought her back. Without any of us asking. And I, in gratitude, carefully considered all that he had revealed about the past. His ridiculous claim that Hydaelyn and Zodiark both were Primals. The very first and most powerful out of any that had come after them.

And it clicked.

So we are no better than the beastmen, then those we had once pitied for their blind faith in legends. In the end, I could not avoid the fight against Emet-Selch. Against Hades. And even then, I could feel the truth in his words. We were all the same and though he had thought himself superior to all, he too had been tempered by his ‘god’.

We’re all just sinners, in the end.


	6. Trust

It was so hard for me to trust the Scions at first. I had grown up as a refugee living in Ul’dah. I was forever treated as a pariah and soon learned to distrust anyone native to Thanalan that approached with a smile on their lips and darkness in their eyes. I also learned that my father, so susceptible to falling into temptation, had brought us to this place for one reason and it wasn’t the speech about staying in familiar surroundings. It was only in Ul’dah that had ready access to gambling dens and people willing to lend money to those eager to sell their souls.

I pick-pocketed to bring home enough gil for my mother and I to live off of. It was never enough to be secure and well-fed, but it kept us alive. I learned to weave and knit. I learned how to sing and to play a lute. Anything to barter with for a meal or some stray fabric with which to make clothes out of. We nearly dug ourselves out of the pit of poverty. And then my father stole our savings. It was too much for my mother and she wasted away, refusing food and longing for better days far in the past.

I stumbled upon the Pugilist guild around the same time I registered with Momodi as an Adventurer. I learned to fight. I performed the most mundane tasks for people and built a reputation for aiding those that were less fortunate. It seemed to me that this path would lead to another dead-end and although I did my best, I couldn’t help the feeling that I wasn’t making enough; I was selfish to spend money on myself; I needed to spend more money on food and more food. And then I saved the Sultana’s life. And met Thancred. And realized that the visions I was receiving weren’t just weird intuition, but a gift from Hydaelyn, for I was her Chosen.

It takes a long time to learn how to trust. It takes a lot of hard work to maintain that belief in others that allows for trust to build.


	7. Slosh

I can hear it sloshing around. I can see the flask in Thancred’s belt. If I quickened my pace, I could nab it right off of him without having to scuffle with the man. He’s rather tenacious when trying to prevent a repeat of last week’s bar crawl.

Gods above, I want my damned whiskey!


	8. Palaver

I couldn’t keep my eyes open. How long does this kid expect to hold my attention? He’s gone on for nearly an hour, about things I can’t quite remember. I went into this conversation with the intent of talking some sense into him. Now here we were, the tables have turned once again. I had wanted to give HIM the lecture, not the other way around.

Oh wait, he’s not talking anymore. He’s all smug. Gods, did I nod or something? Just what in the seven hells did I just agree to?!


	9. Attune

The deep burdens of my heart have nowhere to go; no one to help carry them as they walk by my side. There was once almost someone willing to share the burden, but the lance of an enemy cut him down before there was time to ask.

I cannot show any vulnerability. There are too many who rely on me to carry the burden of their worries; their hopes and fears and dreams. My soul is weary, stretched to its utmost limits. I nearly break a thousand times, but Her voice guides me back. Renews my will to strive forwards to whatever end is fated to be.

I crave a confidant. I crave someone who looks at me not as a hero, but a woman of flesh and blood. To be so attuned to another’s soul that in a heart’s beat, we recognize each other, even in another life. There is a widening gulf within, more noticeable now as I walk the First. The feeling that there is another path I could walk grows stronger the more Light I take in. As each Warden falls, the tickle of something  _ more _ hits me hard. 

And for the first time, someone else recognizes it too. And understands.


	10. Darkness

To the people of the First, I am the Warrior of Darkness.

To the people of the Source, I am the Warrior of Light.

I am both and I am neither. I am more than a Warrior, but less than a person.

I champion Her cause, though I’ve no cause to fight for that is truly my own. 

I am strong. I am weak. I have faith.  _ I am faithless. _

  
I am Light.  _ I crave Darkness. _


	11. Specter

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Prompt #1 from the FFXIVwrite2017 prompt month

Everyone I know and care for fears it. They fight to prevent it from happening. Even when giving the falsehood of working alongside an enemy to find another way, they knew they wouldn’t be able to follow through with anything that could have been found. The specter of the Rejoining is something they treat as a portent of the End of Days.

_ And I would agree with them if not for the ache in my soul and the ghosts of a past long buried beneath unstable earth and clay... _


	12. Synthetic

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Patch 5.3 Spoiler alert!

_ In that time before time began… _

I walked through rows upon rows of grape vines, booted feet making progress towards the fight ahead of me. I knew Emet-Selch would not say no to my request for Lahabrea’s finest Creation. It would be almost  _ fun _ to take Ifrita down. It would save these wonderful fruits and the loving labor that went into them. The fight that had my insides twisted was the one with the Architect.

I would be hit upon the head with words and frustrations aimed at my shallow motivations and how I wasted Creations for my own selfishness. I found this extremely amusing. I had always been seen as thus.  _ Selfish _ . For wanting to save these grapes. For working to avoid the collapse of things that could just be pulled out of the abundant aether and replace that which was breaking.

It has always been in my nature to wander. To try and do good without upsetting the balance overly much. I was always getting in trouble for this. The insistence that I ought to align myself more to the ideals of our blessed utopia. To force myself to be more ‘naturally’ neutral.

I smile and shake my head as my thoughts once again go over the upcoming spat with Emet-Selch. It was never in my nature to be anything other than myself.


End file.
